He needed his father's signature.
The problem was that, in his previous life, Kael had already treated that father as a man whose account was closed.
Aldren Riorden's manuscript had dried yellow like old blood.
The Empire will pay its price someday.
The sentence on the cover was short.
But because of that short sentence, one conclusion Kael had reached in his previous life collapsed.
Aldren Riorden.
Baron of Riorden, and Kael's father.
In his previous life, Kael had written him off as a failed head of house.
A man who believed in imperial orders and Temple notarizations, and only ever began to doubt after the seals were on the contracts—always too late.
A man who had buried the family beneath a mountain of debt.
That was Kael's conclusion.
A short, cold, convenient conclusion.
"Young Master."
Edric's voice stirred the dust in the room.
"Are you all right?"
"How long have you known of this record?"
Edric did not answer at once.
"I knew of its existence."
"What about its contents?"
"I had not seen them."
"Why not?"
"The Baron forbade it."
"Even while the family was collapsing?"
Edric's lips hardened.
"Yes."
"Why did you obey?"
"He was the head of the house."
In his previous life, Kael would have laughed at that.
He would have said that people who treated contracts and seals as faith were the first to be crushed beneath the Empire's ledgers.
But Kael now knew.
It was easy to mock. Finding why their faith had been trampled was hard.
"When did Father take to his bed?"
"Three years ago. At first, it was only a mild fever. After that, his hands began to shake, and he could no longer stay awake for long."
"The physicians?"
"We called for a Temple physician and an apothecary. They all said it was exhaustion and sickness of the heart."
"Sickness of the heart."
Kael repeated the words.
It was one of the most irresponsible diagnoses in a ledger. When the cause was unknown, it became sickness of the heart. When the person responsible had to be erased, it became misfortune.
Kael turned the first page of the manuscript.
Seventh Supply Order of the Eastern War.
Temporary Request from the Imperial Quartermaster Office.
Part of a Temple notarial number.
And Aldren's handwriting.
Possible discrepancy in the payer.
Kael's fingertips stopped.
The payer.
The word he had seen in the final ledger of his previous life.
His father had already written that word down.
"He knew."
Edric swallowed a breath.
"What do you mean?"
"He knew this supply order was strange."
"The party billed was the four eastern territories. The actual payer was erased. Father had been suspicious of that."
Edric's eyes slowly followed the sentence.
Soon, his face hardened.
"This handwriting..."
"Is it Father's?"
"It is."
"Then why could he not speak of it?"
Edric could not answer.
Kael looked at the dry ink bottle on the desk.
"Because if he spoke, the family would die at once."
"What?"
"There is a difference between billing the Imperial Army for the supplies it took, and challenging the fact that the name of the person meant to pay was erased from a Temple-notarized document. The latter means the Empire and the Temple falsified the ledgers together."
The blood drained from Edric's face.
Kael closed the manuscript.
"Father was not a coward."
The words came out with more difficulty than he had expected.
If his father had been trying to protect something until the end, what did that make the son who had failed to see it?
"Young Master."
Edric spoke carefully.
"Will you see the Baron?"
Kael could not answer.
His father was in the annex.
He was alive.
He needed his signature.
On a ledger, it was simple.
[Condition: Signature of Aldren Riorden, Baron of Riorden]
[Warning: Signatory's Survival Must Be Verified]
But people were not conditional statements.
"Let us go."
Kael tucked the manuscript inside his coat.
"Now?"
"Now."
Edric took up a candlestick.
The two left the room.
The corridor was dark. Whenever the single candle passed the portraits on the walls, the faces of dead Riordens emerged for a moment, then vanished.
Selena stood before the annex door.
As though she had known.
"You found it."
Kael looked at the manuscript inside his coat.
"Did you know?"
"I did not know exactly what it was."
"Then why did you tell us to open the room?"
Selena looked deeper into the annex.
"Because that room was the place your father regretted most."
Edric lowered his head.
"You need a signature, do you not?"
Kael paused for a moment.
"How did you..."
"You opened Aldren's room in the middle of the night and came straight here. There is not much that man can give now. All that remains are his name and his signature."
Selena's voice was even.
But her fingertips were trembling.
Only then did Kael see it.
His mother was not cold because she was practical. She had become practical because she had no time to cry.
"Will it be possible?"
Selena did not answer for a long while.
"There are days when his mind is clear. Only for a very short time."
"Today?"
"I do not know."
"If it is too much..."
"Too much began a long time ago, Kael."
Selena opened the door.
The room was thick with the scent of medicinal herbs.
Aldren Riorden lay in the bed.
He was smaller than Kael remembered his father being.
Far too small.
In one corner of the room stood a ledger stand with an unfinished ledger. Three pens, their ink dried hard, lay side by side on the desk.
It was the arrangement of someone who believed Aldren might sit down to write again.
Aldren's hand rested atop the blanket.
It was a hand with thick knuckles, long stained with ink.
Kael looked at that hand.
This hand had signed.
The Imperial Army's supply orders. Temple-notarized contracts. And the ledgers he himself could not bear.
"Aldren."
Selena sat beside the bed.
"Kael is here."
Aldren did not move.
Kael approached the bed.
"Father."
The word was unfamiliar.
It caught on his tongue like a blade he had not used in a long time.
Aldren's eyelids trembled ever so slightly.
Selena took his hand.
"Aldren. It is Kael."
After a moment, Aldren's eyes opened.
Clouded gray eyes.
But they were not wholly empty.
Those eyes slowly searched for Kael.
Only then did Kael realize that they resembled his own. Aldren's gray, however, was clouded by illness, while Kael's had grown cold from seeing too many reckonings.
"...Kael."
The voice was close to a breath of wind.
"Yes."
"Did you not... go to the capital?"
Something inside Kael's chest sank quietly.
His father was not in the present, but in the day when Kael had said he would leave for the Central Treasury Office.
"I have not gone."
It was a lie.
No. In this life, it was not a lie yet.
Aldren's eyes wavered faintly.
"You must... go. This place..."
He stopped speaking to gather his breath.
Selena wiped his lips with a cloth soaked in water.
"This place is finished."
Kael clenched his hand.
In his previous life, he would have agreed with those words. But this time was different.
"It is not over."
Aldren's eyes looked at Kael.
"I opened the Grayden depot."
Aldren's fingers moved faintly.
"The third... warehouse."
"Yes."
"Was it... empty?"
"No."
Kael took out the manuscript.
"I found the records you left behind as well."
Aldren's pupils wavered.
"I should have... burned it."
"Why did you not?"
Aldren could not answer.
Only after a long while did a voice like the wind emerge.
"Someone... had to see it."
Kael closed his eyes.
It sounded more like a final wish than an excuse.
"Father. We have to open the Temple Notarial Ledger. The debt for relief supplies sent to the four eastern territories is bound to the Riorden name."
Aldren's breathing grew rough.
Selena looked at Kael.
It was a look telling him to stop.
But Aldren moved his fingers first.
As if telling him to continue.
"We need proof of interested-party status. We need your signature and verification that you are alive."
Aldren closed his eyes.
Kael waited.
The candle flame swayed.
After a long silence, Aldren opened his mouth.
"Kael."
"Yes."
"Contracts..."
He drew in a breath.
"Must be kept."
Aldren's voice was weak, but those words were strangely clear.
"The reason the Empire is the Empire... is because of that one line."
Kael knew those words.
They were the words his father had clung to all his life, and the words Kael had despised most in his previous life.
"What if it is the Empire that has not kept that contract?"
Aldren's eyes opened again.
Something like an old ember remained in those clouded eyes.
"Then..."
His fingers scraped the blanket.
"Claim it."
Kael stopped breathing.
Aldren was looking at Kael.
For the first time, as though he were seeing the Kael of the present.
"You... do it."
Selena lowered her head.
Kael took out the blank confirmation form he had tucked inside the manuscript.
Interested-Party Confirmation.
House Riorden.
Regarding the Seventh Supply Order of the Eastern War.
Aldren's hand trembled.
Kael started to place the pen in his hand, then stopped.
This was not only a signature.
It was asking a father he had treated as a man whose account was closed to stand before a ledger again.
"You do not have to push yourself."
The corner of Aldren's mouth moved ever so slightly.
"Too late."
"What?"
"I already... pushed myself too hard too late."
He laid his hand over Kael's.
It was cold.
But a little strength remained.
"This time... do not be late."
Kael gripped the pen.
Aldren's hand settled over his.
The signature was not straight.
The strokes trembled, and the last character of his name nearly collapsed. But it was unmistakably written.
Aldren Riorden.
At that moment, red letters appeared in Kael's vision.
[Signature Confirmed]
[Survival Verified: Conditionally Fulfilled]
[Proof of Interested-Party Status: Provisional Effect Granted]
[Next Record Available for Inspection: Eastern Temple Branch Notarial Ledger]
Kael looked down at the confirmation.
A single thin sheet of paper. One weak signature. But it weighed more than money.
"Father."
Aldren's eyes were slowly closing.
"I will make the claim."
Aldren's lips moved, almost without a sound.
"The one who borrowed..."
Kael's hand stopped.
Aldren could not finish speaking.
His breaths grew shallow again, and his consciousness drifted away.
Selena placed his hand beneath the blanket.
For a while, no one in the room spoke.
Edric asked in a low voice,
"Young Master. Are we going to the Temple now?"
Kael shook his head.
"If we go straight there, they will block us."
"Then..."
"First, we make a witness."
Selena looked at Kael.
"A witness?"
"Someone the Temple cannot deny saw Father's signature today."
"Who do you have in mind?"
Kael looked at the red letters hovering over the confirmation.
[Refusal of Inspection Difficult If External Transaction Proof Is Attached]
Kael recalled the name Selena had mentioned during the day.
Mira Belka.
A merchant who knew the price of risk.
"Mother."
"Speak."
"We need to send word to Belka tonight, not tomorrow."
Selena looked at Kael for a moment.
"You want to call for a merchant in the middle of the night?"
"We are not calling for a merchant. We are calling for a witness."
Kael tucked the confirmation inside his coat.
"And someone to put a price on it."
Outside the window, a wind before dawn blew.
The night was not over yet.
But one of Riorden's long-closed ledgers had just been opened again.
And on the first page of that ledger, a trembling signature remained.
Not in the name of a fallen house, but in the name of a right that had not yet ended.